


After Ginger Snaps

by Kount_Xero



Series: Ginger Snapped [1]
Category: Ginger Snaps (2000 2004)
Genre: Alternate Ending, Complete, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-24
Updated: 2012-04-24
Packaged: 2017-11-04 06:32:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 56
Words: 12,166
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/390839
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kount_Xero/pseuds/Kount_Xero
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Brigitte catches up with Ginger in Sam's room, things end very differently.  Brigitte's life is broken and she has none but Sam to turn to, to pick up the pieces left of Ginger finally snapping.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue: Rid the Past by Dying (Movement 1)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thewindupbird](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thewindupbird/gifts).



> To Ilurandir, without whom, my enthusiasm couldn't last.
> 
> The chapter title "Rid the Past by Dying" is a song by The Angelic Process, off of their "Coma Waering" album.

_“You BITCH!”_

 

_Brigitte is screaming, her own voice tearing her throat apart; and with fists that she knows are too feeble, too meek to make any kind of real impact, hits her sister.  Every blow deepens her need to vent out her frustration, her clenched-teeth, white-knuckle rage._

_“You want me!? You want me!? Then stop hurting everybody else and take me! Take me!”_

_She feels Ginger’s hand on her shoulder, sharp fingernails scraping her coat, and for the fraction of a second, believes that Ginger will see her strife.  See her despair, listen, hear and understand her sister._

_Instead, Ginger pushes her away, and Brigitte falls._

“I don’t want you!” _Ginger screams, her guttural voice reverberating in the air like a snarl._

_Brigitte feels the table against her back.  She tries to rise to her feet, but her mind is crippling her, tying her limbs.  She just stares at Ginger, feeling the stray second that passes between the first impact of her words and the next sentence stretch out to accommodate the rush of compressed emotion._

_The second passes._

“I don’t even know you!”

_Brigitte snaps._


	2. Shiver

The sound of cold winds howling outside and rattling the strong yet rickety greenhouse, the creaking of wood as it expands, contracts, moves and settles surrounds her in the pitch-black of the room and Brigitte wakes up, screaming, her head still reeling in from the dream.

There is no blanket draped over her and she’s shivering in the cold.


	3. Finder's Fee

Her bare feet find the tiled floor. The cold stone under her soles make her shudder and briefly, she considers staying put just not to go through the pain of walking across that icy ground. Not an option.

Her eyes find the vague outlines of shapes in the dark and her mind finds a pathway through various obstacles. Her nose finds the familiar scent of fresh soil hanging in the air.

Brigitte traverses the distance in what she finds to be a flash and finds herself, lost, in front of a door she found once before, in a night just like this – a night that finds her no matter where she runs.


	4. Cold (But I'm Still Here)

Three hours into the night, Sam wakes with a start, heart racing and his entire body, coiled up, responding to the presence of a shadow lingering in the doorway.  Sam recognizes the thin outline.  She sways from side to side, a thin shadow, as if hesitant.

Sam remembers and calls, “Brigitte..?”

“I’m cold.” She says, her voice quivering.  She shivers, braces herself and clamps her legs together.  Her breath is coming in ragged, short gasps.

“Oh shit... yeah, no blankets, uhh...” his brain refuses to start, his thoughts are dragging the ground and his ideas are lagging behind.

“Umm... can I just sleep here?”

Sam can’t say anything to that, his brain locks up again, but he is functional enough to know she doesn’t have anywhere else to sleep, and it is cold.

Besides, he doesn’t mind having her sleep next to him... at all.

“Yeah, sure.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Cold (But I'm Still Here)" is an Evans Blue song.


	5. A Shade Orange

Brigitte approaches the bed, each step increasing her need to turn around and disappear into her own head. This isn’t normal for her, this is miles from normal. Sure, her normal isn’t anywhere in the neighborhood of what others considered normal, but this is just right on the corner of fucked up and desperate – she occupies the corner as best as she can.

 _Just cope._ She tells herself, _Go a shade orange and fucking cope._

 __She hesitates momentarily as Sam throws the blanket open and creates her space in the admittedly small cot. She slips into the space, warm from his body heat, warm and cozy, and draws her knees to her chest. Sam drapes the blanket over her, and she latches onto the thick, patterned fabric, shivering.

“Thanks.” She murmurs, barely managing the one word through rattling teeth.

“Just try and get some sleep.” He says.

Brigitte feels his body turn next to hers. It’s strange, yet also comforting. She doesn’t dwell. She closes her eyes and drifts.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Going a shade orange" is from a deleted scene where Pamela tells Brigitte that her mother ("Grammy") used to tell her that.


	6. The Faithful (Bleed Believer) (Movement 2)

_The faithful shall kneel on bleeding shins, is what she remembers. Bleeding shins. Why shins? Why kneel while bleeding at all, if bleeding will bring more pain?_

_But she must be faithful, she must be of the faithful if she’s kneeling into the blood, screaming out the tenets of her faith in an incoherent shriek that tears through the silence of this ritual. This idol worship that doesn’t do anything but fuck her up day and day and day again, time and again and again, what does it do but suffer her to these things?_

_Coffins, caskets, shrouds, graves, six foot deep, stonemasons, marble slabs, strangulation, exsanguination, pins and sockets, knives and wrists, wrists and girls, nooses and ropes and blood and all things nice is what little girls are made of to her._

_So she kneels, shins dipped in blood and screams her faith, screams that she is the willing, the faithful, the chosen for this, she should have been the one... She mouths the name and bleeds and prays and worships and invokes._

_“Ginger!”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Bleed Believer" is a song by The Angelic Process.


	7. Nameless

There is no name for the terror she feels as Brigitte opens her eyes to the darkness of Sam’s room with a scream on her lips – it is the amalgamation of every savage impulse and bastard dread, made into one malevolent mixture churning inside of her mind, that keeps that scream ripping her throat as it exits, scraping her mouth.

She kicks the air, swings her head and punches, all in hopes of inflicting some sort of damage to this nameless fear.

What stops her finally is her elbow coming into contact with something soft and Sam groaning in pain.


	8. Shame

The pain is blinding for a lingering second, for a second lasting more like ten seconds, maybe, and it’s taking away all his senses for that stretched-out instant.  The wind is knocked out of him and he’s struggling for breath – the only thought in his head, beneath the pain, is that for such a thin little girl, she packs quite a punch.

“I’m sorry, I’m... really sorry...” Brigitte says, and he finds her turned towards him, sitting up, hands in the air.  Just sort of staring at him, unsure of what to do.

“It’s okay...” he breathes, feeling his chest settle, “You okay..?” breathe, just breathe, “That was...” breath, in, out, “...some elbow.”

“I’m really, really sorry.” She says and hangs her head.  Staring at her hands, he thinks.

“No problem, hey.  At least now we know you can punch well.” He says.  There’s nothing to be ashamed about, but how to tell her that, he’s just not sure.


	9. Shame, II

Brigitte stares at her hands as Sam catches his breath.  It’s not the horrific reality of the dream, of the dream she’s been having for a few days now, or, let’s be honest, ever since that night... it’s not every thought, emotion and down-beat, bastard piece of self-loathing that comes with the dream... it’s the basic tenets of behavior, or lack thereof, that leads to embarrassment.

She just doesn’t know how to act around him.

She doesn’t know what to say, what to do, where to sit, how to speak, make a conversation.  He’s given her all he can: he lets her stay in the greenhouse while her house is investigated, he makes all the meals, he pays for her food, and there she is, clamming up on him; not a word to spare, not a nice gesture to respond to his seemingly endless kindness.

He’s the only friend she has, and only person she has left in the world, and she just doesn’t know what to do with him.


	10. Ask

“Was it a nightmare?” Sam asks.  He decides, this is the way.  Ask.  Learn.  Inquire.  She’s a silent one, he’s discovered; without the benefit of monkshood and lycanthropy to provide equal ground, she just clams up.

“Yes.” Brigitte says.

“The same one?” he asks.

Brigitte glares at him, surprised that he’d notice.  Surprised that he was paying attention.  Why would he?

“Yes.” She says.  Maybe this is how she can respond, she thinks; without the benefit of monkshood and lycanthropy, she can’t find her way to a dialogue, so maybe this is the way.  Answer.  Tell.

“How does it go?”

“What?”

“The nightmare, how does it go?”

How does he do that? How does he just ask things like that?

“I don’t remember.” Brigitte lies.

Sam notices, but doesn’t press it.


	11. Night Stalker

Brigitte stays still and imitates sleep.  She’s good at pretending, and pretending sleep is no different than pretending dead – it just involves a lot more regular breathing.  Sam buys into her fiction and falls asleep next to her.

She quietly slips out of the bed, shivers to the cold ground.  Takes Sam’s sweater, draped over the back of his chair and wraps it around herself.  She tip-toes her way out of his room and begins to follow the pathway she has drawn in these last few days.  Her steps trace the road that she is slowly making, or rather learning, and her thoughts are organized along the road.  Every step clicks another notion into place, but each notion and idea is crooked, twisted and otherwise bent all out of shape and won’t fit with the others.

She thinks about Ginger.  She thinks about Sam.  She thinks about Pamela, she thinks about Henry and regarding all, what might have been, what is, what should have been and what will never be.

Brigitte stalks her own thoughts in the night, to the sound of the howling wind and creaking house.  She eventually finds her way back to Sam’s room, tired and sore from the reality that she’s had to remind herself, and slips quietly into the bed.  She stays still and imitates sleep.  She’s good at pretending, and pretending is almost no different than making something real.  Almost.


	12. Ache

In the darkness of the no-dream, her half-awareness begins.  It allows her to sense things pertaining to herself, herself and nobody else, but only in suggestions or painful realities.

Suggestion: Sam’s arm is draped over her and he’s holding her in her sleep... or in his sleep.

Painful reality: the stitches on her arms, beneath the bandages, ache.


	13. Friendly Distances

Sam wakes up to find that he has turned and hugged Brigitte in his sleep.  He also finds that she responded; their ankles are all tangled up, and her hand is holding onto his wrist like it’s her last resort.

So much for friendly distances, he thinks.  But then again, she already bridged across that distance last night, so this isn’t exactly out of the left field.  It’s just that he can’t imagine her actually doing this, any of this.  Physical intimacy and Brigitte Fitzgerald are two concepts he’s having trouble uniting in his mind.

Shows what you know, asshole, he chides himself.


	14. Summons

Brigitte wakes up to the sound of Sam speaking in the living room, his voice being softened and muffled by the distance the acoustics of the greenhouse.  Immediately she’s struck by the feeling of being an eavesdropper, the same thing she had back when Pam and Henry used to argue about this, that and the other insignificant shit.  Some part of her understands that if Sam doesn’t want her to hear, she won’t, but most of her doesn’t get that, so she lies there, ready to pretend asleep at a moment’s notice.

“What’s this about, again? Can’t you guys pool your questions together and be done with it in one go?”

Response time.  Brigitte waits.

“I’ll see if she’s awake, wait.”

Approaching footsteps, and Brigitte, knowing that it’s for her, decides that pretending sleep is too much for that – she should just pretend just waking up instead, so she lies back, yawns, props herself up on one elbow and starts to scratching her eyes.

Sam opens the door, phone in hand.

“Yeah, she’s here, hold on.”

He passes the receiver.  Brigitte looks at him.

“It’s Rowlands.” He says.

Brigitte rolls her eyes.

“Hello?”

“ _Ms. Fitzgerald?”_

“Speaking.”

_“I’m gonna need you to come down to the station after lunch.  We have several things we need to discuss.”_

“...I’ll be there.”

Brigitte hands the receiver back to Sam, who slams it on the phone.

“What was it?” he asks.

“Summons.” Brigitte says, “Leland Street.”


	15. Silent Ride

The steady, low, rumbling hum of the engine is the only sound in the van as Sam steers it through the streets of Bailey Downs.  Flanked on both sides by picket fence lawns and red brick houses with angled roofs, the van with the busted grill cruises the quiet streets.

Brigitte stares out the window and watches the houses go by and disappear.  Thinks that anything not in her vision doesn’t exist right now, so the trees are all rolling from non-existence to non-existence and life is likewise a transition from non-life to non-life.

Brigitte remembers Ginger saying that life is between nothing and out there.  She sighs, unconscious of the gesture herself and tries to keep herself from sobbing.  She doesn’t want Sam to know.  She doesn’t want Sam to see her like this, this isn’t the Brigitte he knows.

She knows she’s shit.  She doesn’t need to be told.  She’s shit, and that’s the truth of it – and she always was.  She has these little green eyes...

Brigitte silently cries, and believes Sam doesn’t notice.  He does.  But there’s so little he can do about it, so little he can actually fucking do.  He’s trying to cope on so many levels that there is jack fucking shit he can do to help her, because his arm is too broken to reach out, and so is she.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The characterization of Brigitte was different in the two drafts of the script that I was able to get to. In one, she actually says to Ginger, "I'm shit, I know it" and I thought this would hold true for the character in general, despite her bossy attitude.


	16. Leland Street, I

Leland Street has many meanings for Brigitte.

Leland Street means the police station.  Smell of warm paper, fresh out of the printer, the sound of phones going off, black sludge of a coffee and the interrogation room: the two-way mirror, the metal table and four chairs, dull grey walls and the lamp hanging above, always seeming to be in a sway.  Detective Rowlands always implying something-or-other and denying any implication ever being made in the next sentence.

Leland Street means the diner Sam takes her to before and after every visit.  It’s right across the street from the police station.  They sit, eat, drink, watching the black double doors with chrome handles. The top of the doors are arched together, sharp, like a badge turned upwards.

Leland Street is where her mother is, in lockup and fully exercising her right not to remain silent.  Leland Street is where Brigitte doesn’t go to see her, where she avoids seeing her, avoids talking to her.

Leland Street is the silence.  Inability to talk to Sam, inability to communicate.  The silence of the diner, the silence of their table.  The right to remain silent.

Leland Street is the hospital right next to the police station that Brigitte barely remembers.  Sam remembers every single detail about that hospital, it’s emergency room in particular, but all Brigitte can really remember is the morgue.  The chill of it, the scent of metal, antiseptic, formaldehyde and those plastic body bags.  The whispering hum of it, the silence of the dead.

Leland Street is that enclosed basement where she had to identify Ginger’s body and where she feels that she died.  Leland Street is death, and every time Brigitte has to come down there, she rediscovers where it all actually happened, because nothing really happened on Leland Street, everything just converged on that point and everything ended there.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Leland Street" is actually a song by Guilt Machine.


	17. Leland Street, II

Sam is just sitting there and drinking his coffee.

Brigitte sits across the table from Sam and politely munches on her bagel.  She alternates between staring at her coffee and at him.  The background is filled with the clinking of dishes, the drone-like chit-chat of waitresses and promises to be there if we need anything.  Sam, his tan jacket draped over his shoulders, lights up a cigarette.

Brigitte uses each bite as an excuse to shut up, her hunger as a pretext to the silence that hangs in between them.  Sam doesn’t seem to take notice.  She doesn’t expect him to, but some small part of her hopes that he will.

“You know,” he says, “Back when Trina’d gone missing, I was here every day for about three, four days.” He taps on the window, to the view of the police station’s front doors, “Every damn day.”

“It was because of that rumor.  They said you were hounding her.”

“Christ... I sometimes wish I actually had, at least I’d be getting what I deserved, not this.”

“Umm, did you..?”

Did you what? Do all that? Brigitte doesn’t even know how to properly express the concept, it’s all magazine blurbs and movie scenes and bits and pieces of information. Abstracted, half-finished ideas.  It’s things you do.  It’s things done unto you.  Mysterious, incomplete and undetermined _things_ pertaining to all that squirming and squealing.  And then, as the rumor would have it, oh.

“No.” Sam says, “I didn’t.  We already had that conversation.  I thought for a while she was into me, but it wasn’t for anything other than my side business.  And maybe all that Rage Against the Machine.”

Brigitte can’t help but smile.  She looks outside, to the double doors of the police station and to the passerbys of Leland Street.  The pedestrians are few and far between, and mostly kids enjoying the streets now that school is out for two weeks.

“Sometimes I wonder.” He says, and that’s that.  Brigitte doesn’t pursue.  She munches on the final bites of her bagel and shuts up.

“Did they tell you what it’s about?” Sam asks after a few minutes.

“Ginger’s autopsy is in.” Brigitte says.


	18. Leland Street, III

Sam pays for everything.  Sam always pays for everything.  Brigitte remembers from what she has seen and read that guys pay and girls smile and thank them, but this bothers her.  Of course, she has no money and doesn’t even know where to begin to get a job.

Not that Sam ever says anything about money.  He just picks up the tab.  Brigitte thanks him, but can’t smile.

Brigitte tried telling him that he didn’t have to two days ago, that she should have a little bit of money in the house, but all Sam said was, it isn’t anything.  She can’t enter the house anyway.  So that means, she doesn’t have money, and he does, so that’s that.

At the end of the meal, the guy pays, the girl thanks him and he smiles in the girl’s place.


	19. This is Our View, I

Detective Wallace Rowlands is an imposing man with a square jaw, a lined face and a very stern brow.  His stare is rather gentle, but his demeanor is the opposite.  He never wears a jacket and always displays his holster – Brigitte thinks it is just to intimidate, to say, he has a gun.  He has the authority to use it.

So now, in the featureless room, facing the mirror and seeing the ugly creature that is herself looking back at her, Brigitte listens to him tell her of a spin he’s putting on the story at hand.  He rests one hand on a large folder containing a stack of papers while he reads from his pad.

“So, this is our view.”

That’s what he always says, _this is our view,_ like it’s a scenery.  Like it’s a perspective, and hers is all askew.

“The autopsy shows that this is a clear-cut case of suicide by slitting her throat.  Her carotid artery was severed clean off and she bled out.” Rowlands says, matter-of-factly, “There’s a hesitation wound where the incision actually begins, and the angle of the cut is consistent with a left-handed individual who, had this been a murder, had to be standing inside her torso to do it... or a right-handed individual who was very, very close to her.”

Brigitte feels her stomach churn.  A pain erupts there.  This is their view? This is their fucking view, that she might have slit her sister’s throat? The stitches on her arm rage at the thought, throb as her fingers curl into a painful fist and she wants to scream, this is your fucking view!?

“Now, that is all fine, but see, here’s where I’m having a bit of trouble.”

He opens the folder, fishes out a stray piece of paper and puts it in front of her.  Brigitte looks down and feels her blood run cold.  It’s Ginger’s handwriting, and the note is from her bedside wall.

_Death is an underrated art.  I do it especially well._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "This is Our View" is a song by the now-defunct Rinoa.
> 
> "Death is an underrated art. I do it especially well" was from the background of the DVD (Canadian version.)


	20. This is Our View, II

Rowlands lays out a few more excerpts, and Brigitte follows.

 

_I am leaving this place forever_

_Without thoughts_

_Without hope_

_Without work_

Next.

 

_Alone in the dark_

_The snow will_

_Cover my footsteps_

 

“This one, I especially liked.” Rowlands says.  Brigitte recognizes the note to be the one from the girl in the trunk shot.  _The sun is leaving the hill now so hope nothing else happens._ “And then, there are the photos.” __

“I know about them.  I’m in them.  I took them.” Brigitte says, the pain in her stomach sharpening at the implication.

“Now, tell me about, uhh...” a customary glance at his pad, just for show, Brigitte notices, “...the Pact.”

Tell him about the Pact? How to put into words something that advances way beyond what that word can contain? Something that is made of pain and misery and happiness, all in immeasurable quantities? Something, made in blood, forged in loneliness and channeled into two little scars on her hand, that was her life and would be her death for the past seven years?

How to express the meaning of it? Impossible. The sheer magnitude, the pure, unrivaled vast expanse of that promise... who could tell him, or anyone else, about it?

A promise to take to the grave or to wherever else they would go, one of which Ginger already is in, the other, Brigitte is sure she will never reach.

Wallace Rowlands, his gentle eyes betraying his pushy demeanor, waits for an answer.  Brigitte looks at him.

“Out by sixteen or dead in this scene, but together forever.  That’s the Pact.” Brigitte says, and the little scars in her palm ache in conjunction with the void in her chest, the void that Ginger left behind.

“A suicide pact.” Rowlands says.

“We said we’d go together.” Brigitte says, “One way or the other.”

“Looks like she went without you.” Wallace comments, and Brigitte only wants to know if this murderous rage, the urge to bite his fucking throat out and spit out the piece of meat that came with the bite, is anything close to what Ginger felt.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The first part of the note ("I am leaving this place...") was used for the pill-eater death photo of the "Life in Bailey Downs" project. The second part hangs from Brigitte's neck in the final, "hanging" photo. Both, however, are actually halves of a real note left behind by a man exiled in Siberia. "The sun is leaving the hill now," too, is from an actual suicide note.


	21. Leland Street, IV

Brigitte walks out of the police station, sits down in front of its steps and checks her watch.  It’s a little ways after two o’clock, and Sam isn’t going to check in until five.  She considers going to the diner, but has no money.

Having already agreed to meet Sam in front of the police station, Brigitte is left alone with the ache in her stomach that is slowly moving towards her back in the middle of Leland Street.


	22. Inflict (With Mouthfuls of Blood) (Movement 3)

_Brigitte inflicts, because that is all she can do.  It all makes sense in that instant – a sort of maddening sense that forces senselessness to become sensible by taking all sense of insanity from it.  It is the very essence of madness creeping up, the very core of why she inflicts what she inflicts._

_It is before she has to kneel on bleeding shins, it is the threshold moment that lingers in the air, thicker than the silence and Brigitte feels her tongue sharpen into a blade, cuts herself on it and feels the blood fill her mouth – she spits a mouthful, gurgles on the taste of the thick liquid, and spews the stains swimming in it._

_“You don’t know me? Well, I know you.  I know how fucking scared you are of being left alone.  How terrified you are of the notion that someday, you might have to be on your own – so that’s why everybody must love you, everybody must fucking worship the idea of Ginger Ann Fitzgerald, and if they don’t, well FUCK them, they’re all average, aren’t they!?”_

_The blade of her tongue, sharp, cutting, lashing..._

_“You wanna talk average, let’s talk average – how about this?”_

_Hand wave, across the scene, like a sword cutting through a helpless victim..._

_“I mean, what, you think you’re fucking my boyfriend or something when you do this, whatever this is!? Let me guess, I’m supposed to feel betrayed by_ him _and come running to you?”_

_...mouthful of blood, too much of it to spit, swallowing the ire, swallowing it down, choking on it, choking..._

_“You said you’d rather be dead than go average on me, well you_ have _gone average! You’re just like Trina fucking Sinclair, fucking the drug dealer! And for what!? To get back at your little sister, and for something I didn’t even do! I didn’t abandon you, I was trying to save you, god damn it! This is bullshit! All of this! You were supposed to trust me, you were supposed to protect me, and every time I do right by you all I get is shit! This fucked up, selfish, neurotic, girly shit!”_

_...deathblow, bleeding from the sharp edge, tongue standing proud and bloodied..._

_“You don’t even give a shit about the Pact anymore, it’s just something to string me along and you... just...” clenched teeth ”don’t... CARE! You...”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Inflict" is a song by Amaran. "With Mouthfuls of Blood" is a song by The Angelic Process"


	23. Leland Street, V

“Hey, hey, hey!”

_Knife-tongue swirling in her mouth, scraping teeth and cutting into gums, drawing blood, drawing ire..._

“Brigitte, hey! Come on, it’s me, it’s Sam.”

Fingers curling around something soft, something soft that she can hold onto, fingernails dulled by its fabric... fabric? Cotton? No, wool? Melton wool, yes, tan, in the style of those trenchcoats that detectives wear in those old movies, but this isn’t a trenchcoat, it’s a regular jacket... Sam’s jacket...

“Sam?”

“Yeah, it’s me.”

She opens her eyes to the daylight fading over Leland Street and Sam, holding her.

“You were dreaming.” Sam says, “It’s all a dream, alright? Just a dream.”

Brigitte can’t say anything.  It’s spitting out anger and swallowing rage that knots her tongue up this time – that which gives it power also takes it away.  She can only hold onto Sam’s jacket, and bite her tongue until she can stand up on her own again.


	24. Greenhouse

They drive that silent drive back to the greenhouse.  Sam parks in his regular spot, they both get off and enter the greenhouse.  The temperature inside is great, considering the outside.  Brigitte, without a word, goes into what has become her room in the past few days.  Sam thinks he should maybe follow her, maybe say something, maybe talk.

He knows she’s stuck on that night.  He’s still stuck on that night himself, but he has to cope for two people, he sees.  Luckily for him, he has the benefit of knowing that it was nobody’s fault.


	25. Love to Sleep

Sam would love to sleep.  He would love to take his sling off, lie down and drift away.  To forget everything, to forget where he’s sleeping.  A cigarette helps, so he smokes one, facing the ceiling.  Rest isn’t something that he can count on, because he feels wide awake, and it’s already two in the morning and he will crawl to get up when daylight, gray and monochrome, floods the sky.

He thinks of Brigitte, sleeping –he hopes- in the living room, and doesn’t know where the thought comes from; but understands why it’s there.  He takes another drag from his cigarette and lets his thoughts scatter with the swirling smoke.

 

Brigitte would love to sleep.  She would love to shut down completely, imitate death in an involuntary, brief and incomplete suicide, slow her heart and close off her mind.  She would love to close her eyes to the world, because long is the way that out of hell leads up to light, and she has no pennies to give the one that can carry her there.  She doesn’t have anything to give at all.

She thinks of Sam, sleeping –she hopes- in his room, and doesn’t know where the thought comes from.  Doesn’t understand why she would.  She turns to her side, and the warm thought lingers.  There’s a knot in her chest that’s aching in harmony with her back.

 

They would love to sleep.  The awareness of each other, in different rooms but still together, the fact of one another, stirs them from isolated rest and keeps them awake through the night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Love to Sleep" is a song by She Wants Revenge.


	26. Just a Dream

Somewhere in Bailey Downs, a detective is plagued by a recurring nightmare.  He dreams of woods, of high walls, of hunger, of mad wolves and fire, of foolishness and death.  He wakes up, covered in sweat, and remembers that it’s just a dream.  Just a dream.


	27. Rites of Passage (Crippled Healing) (Movement 4)

_“What did she do..?”_

_Sam asks.  Sam is curious, Brigitte knows.  She feels this like she feels the slick liquid, red, on her hands, in her palm._

_“Fuck... what did she do!?”_

_What did she do? Did she do anything that would warrant this reaction? Did she?_

_No.  This is a rite of passage, she thinks, she wants to say, this is a rite of passage.  Passage from Her to Me.  To Myself._

_“Shit...”_

_The slick liquid.  Red.  On her hands._

_The thought of it, the raw notion of it, the realized concept that is no longer abstract sends her reeling.  Her fingers release her grip.  Something falls to the ground with a clang._

_Brigitte looks down._

_It’s the knife, stained and discarded lying on Sam’s carpet._

_“I’m...” Brigitte hears her own voice, quivering, “...sorry... I didn’t...”_

**Yes, you did.** Ginger’s voice, booming, fades into her head, **look at it, look at what you did!**

_Brigitte looks..._

 

She screams as she wakes up – her whole body springs as if released from being wound up so tight, and she feels her breath get stuck in her throat.  The only thing keeping her there is Sam, stronger than she cares to think, holding her down.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Rites of Passage" is an Aenima song. "Crippled Healing" is, again, a song by The Angelic Process.


	28. Two Weeks Gone

There is no sense of time in the greenhouse.  The dead silence of unmoving leaves and the scent of soil, morbid in its permanence, douses the whole place with a feeling of stasis. Every day melts into the next while dragging piece of the previous, most marks of progress are mundane quantity details: how much hot water’s left, how much milk in the fridge...

The isolation that the place provides is much welcome for both of its residents, as the feeling of being on the absolute edge of existence is enhanced by this detachment.

To Brigitte, it’s like a game she used to play with Ginger.  Another one in her long list of countless games, called, World Ends.  The game was simple: you’d enter the room, and the moment you shut the door would be the moment the world ends outside.  Nobody survives but you and whoever is with you in that room, and as survivors, you have the chance to make the world exactly what you want it to be.

Brigitte wishes that was the case.  She runs a finger across the stitches on her forearms, shivers with the dull ache that calls forth the other one in her back, and wishes she can do that.  If she could, she would just block out Bailey Downs completely, but the world, which Bailey Downs is an extension of, always seeps into the greenhouse via the perpetually-on beat-up TV in the living room.


	29. Videodrome

Brigitte sits in Sam’s living room, on the couch, smokes and looks at the TV.  The pictures move, she stares at them and forgets everything for a short while.  Roll credits.

Sometimes, there’s a news report, her mother’s mugshot on the screen, the obligatory guests of a women’s studies prof, a pop shrink and some random minor celebrity there to pontificate on what would lead a perfectly happy suburban mother would just up and kill a cheerleader.

Oh, and didn’t one of her daughters slit her own throat?

Brigitte runs one finger down the stitches on her arm.  Slight ache, sharp, thin, but present.

Oh, and didn’t the other daughter try to commit suicide, too?

Oh, yeah, she did.  And their father, he just up and left them! Can you believe how irresponsible some dads are these days?

Brigitte looks at the scene.  If this it, she wouldn’t be caught dead in it.


	30. Venus in Furs

Sam decides he can’t be bothered with all the tools, he can carry them in later.  Right now, all he wants is a cigarette, maybe a bit of rye, and some company.

He smiles as he opens the door.  The greenhouse carries a warmth for him, and the strange notion of another person in there is better than he could have hoped for.  Of course, as it has been for the past week, his sense of ease is immediately smashed to pieces by the silence of the place.  He knows that this is how it always is, that Brigitte has the TV on 24/7, but it always brings him back to that night.

He quickly moves to the living room.  Did she do it again? Did she? Does he have to, no, wait, focus, calm the fuck down, she’s there.  She’s there, as always, a small figure wrapped in the fabric of one of his shirts and pants, sitting there with the blanket wrapped all around her, a Venus in Furs, fixated onto the screen.

He breathes a sigh of relief.  Then, he has the urge to move forward and touch her, to make physical contact.  Maybe to ensure she’s really there.

Yeah, right.


	31. Uncovered

Sam reaches out and with one hand, ruffles up her hair.  She doesn’t respond.  Huh.  That’s odd – she normally just draws back with a jerk, like he’d try to snap her neck or something.

“I didn’t hear you come in.” Brigitte says, and Sam wonders why she’s so focused on an eyeliner commercial.  He sits down next to her, and funny enough, she doesn’t shift or adjust or shirk as she usually does.

“What’s up?” Sam asks.

“I’m not sure.”

She points at the screen.  It’s the local news.  A news reporter with one of those tacky perm jobs is on, holding sheets of paper and says:

_“Can the Beast of Bailey Downs be back? Yesterday, one Joan Coleman, resident of Bailey Downs reported her dog, Nathaniel, missing, it’s chain apparently ripped out from where it was bolted to the wall...”_

“Shit.” Sam says.  He’s not sure if that even begins to cover it.


	32. Binary Orbit

Soon after the broadcast, they are circling the living room, their orbit determined by the mystical pull of the birch coffee table in the middle and their paths determined by each other’s rotation.

“Look, you don’t know that,” Sam says, “,hell, even _they_ don’t even know that.  So Ben Coleman’s dog is missing, so what?”

“Missing? The chain was-“

“Do you know what breed Nathaniel was?” Sam asked, “He’s a fucking Mastiff, he’s huge, and I wouldn’t trust my bike to the chain they had on him.”

She paces, he follows, they are always equidistant to the coffee table and their positions, in relation to one another, remain fixed.

“What if it is,” she says, one hand gently rubbing her back, “What if it is another?”

“Another what, another lycanthrope?” Sam says, “We still have the monkshood, right? Push comes to shove, most gardening tools can be used as weapons, so we’re set on both sides.”

Brigitte shouts.

“Set for what, Sam, set to defend ourselves!? Against the wolves!? Well, we still have no _fucking idea_ what it is, and we’re supposed to be ready!? We assume it’s a lycanthrope, but what if it _isn’t_!?”

“Well we’ve had that conversation too – all we need to know is that it’s some sort of an animal carrying a zoonotic disease, that’s it! Calm down, Jesus! We’ll do what we did last time, we-“

“What we did last time? We didn’t do _jack shit_ the last time, we just... we...”

She stops her rotation, keeps still, hovering on orbit.  He breaks it, comes around to her.  She turns her head away, hides behind her hair, but he knows that maneuver, it’s the first trick he’s seen.  He knows that one.  He reaches out, she draws back.  Square one, it is.

“It wasn’t your fault.” He says, “None of it.”

Brigitte presses her lips together.  Because it was, and she knows it.


	33. Survivors Sleep

The rest of the evening is passed in a state of non-conversation.  After half an hour or so, Sam grabs his bottle of Old Goose and decides to leave her to it.  She doesn’t listen to him anyway.

 

Brigitte waits for Sam to leave.  Once he does, she lies herself back down, covers herself up, tries to ignore the cold and tries to sleep.  Rest isn’t something that comes easy, and she knows that it’s her, the sight of the three plants and her thoughts until her body gives up.  Brigitte closes her eyes and thinks of Ginger, of marble and stonemasons.  She thinks of death.  She thinks of dying, of suicide and of the Pact.

The scars in her hand ache in harmony with a strange knot in her chest that she can’t seem to unravel.

 

Sam leaves Brigitte to her thoughts and returns to his room, to that of his own.  He sits on the bed, trying to collect them.  A cigarette helps, so he smokes one, slowly, watching the smoke rise regularly and feeling the first signs of his morning cough in his throat.  By the end of the cigarette, nothing is any different, so he lies down and thinks about all the shit that the school will have him do in the morning.

His head throbs.  He thinks maybe, it’s the rye, but fuck it. Another sip will cure it, so he sips, and it goes away.

 

Pam sleeps soundly in her cell, the covers up to her chin, safe behind bars, safer than she ever has been before.  Her thoughts are calm, as she knows that it would never work with Henry anyway, and Brigitte and Ginger grew up faster than she could catch up with.  At least they are safe, she thinks, that’s all that matters.

She sighs and smiles in her sleep.  Everything settles and all is well.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The chapter title is a song by The Foreshadowing.


	34. Coffin Varnish (The Sun in Braids) (Movement 5)

_It’s as simple as tangling the sun in braids, it’s as simple as a movement from A to B where Distance times Duration equals, if it at all can, Death._

_“Brigitte, don’t...” Sam breathes._

_She must.  It’s coffin varnish.  Her bleeding shins demand that she be faithful to what she has in her hands, and what she has in her hands will do nicely.  Just a bit, just a tad, it’s not too much.  Not too much to ask, not too much to give._

_“Stop, what are you...”_

_Stop? No.  This is the moment.  This is it.  This is the precipice, and she’s looking down._

_“Brigitte,_ don’t! _”_

_Brigitte looks up.  There it is, hanging from Sam’s ceiling.  The sun, but it’s not round – it’s all tangled up in braids, and Brigitte feels that she braided it.  Well, with one move, she can straighten each strand and make it right again._

_Sam stands up.  Brigitte presses the linoleum knife’s hooked end into her wrist.  It punctures skin and her flesh embraces the tip.  She pulls it up the length of her forearm, tears the flesh apart and burns out the sun._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The chapter title is a song by The Atlas Moth. The sub-title is a song by, again, The Angelic Process.


	35. Morning Pains

Brigitte wakes up to the now-familiar sight of the purple candle on the birch coffee table, against the background noise of the local news.  The scent of soil, cigarettes and coconuts in her nostrils, the taste of rye in her mouth.  The low drone of the television, the sounds emanating all jumbled into meaningless mumbling.  Everything is in place.  Everything is familiar.

What isn’t familiar is the goddamn cramp that’s gripping her from the inside.  Is she even sure it’s just cramps?

Just... cramps... oh God.

Brigitte stands up and feels the blood drying on her inner thighs – and fresh droplets, thick, are moving across those spots and sliding down the length of her calves before finding their way to the ground.  Blood.


	36. Sense of Unease, I

Sam shuffles along the aisles of the mart, taking comfort in the neatly-organized stacks and the dull, sterile, white lights overhead.  So far, there’s been two customers, other than him and one of them is that old lady he keeps seeing around Leland Street.  The familiarity of those elements clash with the particular aisle he’s in.

She explained to him why she’s gotta stay in – if the Beast is back, then it’d go straight for her.  Sam can find a few things to disagree with in that theory, but the fact of the matter remains that he can’t move her, he knows that much.

He also understands, more or less, the necessity of why he’s there – hanging out, involuntarily, with Trina and her posse has taught him a few things that he thought he’d never use.  One is to not be fooled by brand declarations.  He scans through them, with no clear idea about the differences in between each one, his sense of unease enhanced by the stray bits of commercials stuck in his head.

The other thing he remembers is to go for quantity and not to fret over quality.  It’s economics, long-run benefits outweigh the losses of the short run.

So which one? Is there really a difference? Sam scans through them again, and then decides, fuck it, there’s no way to do this anyway...

Oh.  There it is.  That one looks promising.  It comes with a free calendar, too.


	37. Sense of Unease, II

Brigitte grips the carving knife as hard as she can without ripping the stitches on her arm, and paces her own orbit around the birch coffee table.  The drone of the television is growing louder every second, it seems, and the pain is immense.

She paces, circling, circling, retracing the same line in an endless loop.  Her sense of unease is brought on more by the fact that she can’t go out, than anything else – oh, she’s been shut in the greenhouse, except for that odd police interview about whether or not she killed Norman, for the whole week, yes.  But being shut in with the option of going out and being shut in without that are two different modes of being altogether.

So Brigitte, in pain, circles the same line, like the arms of the clock, and waits to hear the tell-tale crunch of the van’s wheels, carving knife in hand.  The tip is still stained, she notices.


	38. Fallacies

Brigitte, finally having done something about the flow, thanks to Sam, but still uncomfortable with the piece of sanitary cloth stuffed into her panties, shifts constantly where she sits, until she decides to stand up instead.  This brings her almost to eye level with Sam, who is standing with his hands in his pockets.  She folds her arms, almost in response.

“So, what do you think? Sam asks.

Brigitte doesn’t know what exactly he’s asking about.

“Fallacy of security...” she says, “I was thinking...”

Sam lights up a cigarette.

“What about?”

“What if monkshood doesn’t work?”

“You said you cured McCardy with it.”

“I stuck it in his neck and he seemed to be as close to human as he ever was, yeah.”

“So, there you go.”

“But what if it’s temporary?”

“Alright, how about this, I gotta get to the school tomorrow anyway.  On my way back, I’ll swing by McCardy’s and check to see if he’s alright, how’s that?”

“That works...” she says, “But still... you gotta admit, it’s a pretty big what if.”

“Well,” Sam considers it, “Despite what a nightmare it’d be if that were the case, we really don’t know if it works anyway.  So it’s not a fallacy of security as much as it is a fallacy of expectation.”

“How?” Brigitte asks, with more force than she likes.

“Most ranunculaceae have poisonous alkaloids, and the aconites are no exception, so I wouldn’t be surprised if he had just dropped dead.  Like, _aconitum lycoctonum_ , take that – Northern Wolfsbane.  That was what we wanted to get.  _Aconitum napellus_ is what we used – and both poisonous.  A better choice might have been, say, _aconitum anthora_.”

“What’s that?”

“Yellow Monkshood.  It’s root has healing properties, but still, it’s poison.  Not even safe in small doses.  So really, the whole monkshood idea was a shot in the dark.”

Brigitte stops.  This isn’t just a fallacy of this-or-that, this is the mother of all fallacies.

“You mean... there was every chance that the monkshood wasn’t going to work anyway?”

The bitterness in her voice is evident, but Sam isn’t shaken.

“Remember what I said, worst case scenario, the poison of the aconite kills her.”

Brigitte hangs her head.

“That’s not what killed her, in the end.”

“I was there.” Sam reminds her, “And as I recall, it wasn’t you that killed her either.”


	39. After Ginger, I

It all began after Ginger.

Sam remembers what happened very clearly, but it feels somehow disconnected, somehow distant to him now.  It’s as near to him as the throb in his cast, the ache on his shoulder where the sling balances itself for incline, but he just can’t connect with any of it – his distance to the memory determines the amount of protection he has from the actual impact of it.

The entire experience is a simple breakdown of events, step-by-step, and every time he has to recall some aspect of it, everything plays in perfect sequence.


	40. After Ginger, II (Sam's Sequence)

First, Ginger slits her own throat.  Her blood gushes out in one spurt that lasts few seconds, and then she falls.  She gurgles and chokes, and more blood steadily and surely leaks out of the gash.

Second, Brigitte kneels down into the blood, her coat sweeping the floor.  She screams.  Sam can still hear that sound, reverberating with more meaning than can ever be expressed.

Third, he tries to clench his teeth and bear the pain of his broken arm.  His first thought is to call for help.

Fourth, Brigitte stands up.  Her eyes are wide open, and she’s staring at Ginger, who, Sam sees as he tries to breathe, is twitching.

Fifth, Brigitte reaches for the desk and retrieves something.  The light reflects off of the curved blade.

Sixth, he comes to the terrible realization that, if she has more than two seconds with that linoleum knife, she’s following her sister down.

Seventh, he stands, reaches out... this can’t work out like this, this isn’t what’s supposed to be happening...

Eighth, he takes one fraction of a second too long and Brigitte slices her wrist open – and not like the wannabe suicidal way either.  She runs the gash down her forearm, does it the right way.  She screams in pure pain, but doesn’t stop.

Ninth, she puts the damn knife in between her fucking teeth, for Christ’s sake, and does the other arm, more messily and worse off than the other.

Tenth, there is blood everywhere.

Eleventh, there is a decision.  The moment lingers, and he just wishes, rages and prays that this isn’t his call to make, this can’t be his call to make, it’s too much, too impossible, too many odds stacked and too fucked up a situation to play favourites, but there is a decision and it’s down to him.

Twelfth, second realization.  Save one or lose both, it’s very simple.

Thirteenth, it becomes a matter of statistics and ceases to be a choice at all.

Fourteenth, he takes the linoleum knife and cuts strips off of his t-shirt.  He has no idea how to tie the damn thing without using his fingers.  This isn’t going to be a major step for dignity, but all he can focus on is that half-faded fucking memory of that goddamn first aid class.  Where does the tourniquet go, again?

Fifteenth, he uses his hands to place the strips up her arm, and his teeth to pull the cloth as tight as he can.  She’s bleeding bad, and her skin, from where he’s crouched, looks like a vale of flesh, spreading out.

Sixteenth, he lifts her up.  He can use only one arm, the other one hurts like a motherfucker and he has no other way of supporting her.  She’s not unconscious, thank God, but she’s not exactly conscious either.

Seventeenth, keys.

Eighteenth, he gets out, locks the door.  There’s a corpse in there, a suicide, but hey, it’s how you spin your yarn that matters, not how many fibers you have in it.

Nineteenth, he drags Brigitte through the party, hoping to pass off the whole thing as a stunt later on.  Finds his van.

Twentieth, he stands her up against the van and checks her arms.  They’re still bleeding.  He tightens his makeshift tourniquets.

Twenty-first, ignition and the night road.

Twenty-second, please don’t die on me, please don’t die, just stay with me, just stay with me, goddamn it, stay, we could have handled it, we could have coped, you didn’t have to do this alone, you didn’t have to stand alone, just stay, don’t close your no fucking don’t close your eyes and why did I even expect you to listen to me anyway but I am _not_ gonna _fucking_ let this _motherfucking streak go like this!_ You hear me!? _Fuck_ everything, it’s not gonna be two corpses tonight, not if I can help it – one less grave on my _fucking_ slate, so don’t you fucking die on me, Brigitte!

Twenty-third, that split-second instance where the thought of Brigitte dying in the passenger seat becomes everything he can ever think of.  There never was a thought before, and there won’t be one after.

Twenty-fourth, the lonely night road, with her bleeding on the side and him, at the wheel, guiding them through the worst of his thoughts.


	41. After Ginger, III (Brigitte's Fiction)

For Brigitte, it’s not a question of remembering.  She doesn’t do anything _but_ remember, and remember the tipping point, because that’s the only thing that counts anyway.  The rest, to her, is just fiction, and unnecessary fiction at that.  None of it matters, what mattered was saving Ginger, and she knows that she failed.

But there is a continuation of her fiction, she knows.  She doesn’t remember much.  Her recollection isn’t of reality, but of stylized, cliché-laden transitional sequences that are always in between, never complete.

...Sam’s arm snaking around her, lifting...

...the knife, the linoleum knife, falling from...

...her feet dragging the...

...Sam is shouting something, what...

...bodies, morphed, distorted, monstrous – witches, cows, Roman soldiers...

...teardrops on her cheeks...

...four-on-the-floor, aggrotech pounding with...

...warm blood running down...

...car.  Bottle of rye on the dash, half...

...you didn’t have to do this alone...

_But I am alone, she’s gone, she left me and I am alone now.  Everyone seems so happy and I am so alone._

But she’s not alone. Even when he’s raging against the wheel of his van, Sam is there with her, Sam who listens, Sam who hears and Sam who understands, Sam, who is different than the others, Sam who doesn’t think of her that way and why doesn’t he?

...one less grave on my fucking slate...

_But it’s graves every day, even now, bleeding out in the passenger seat, it’s all about graves and tombs and corpses and Death.  It’s always those things, those dead things I adore.  Love for dying and ending and ends, so why not think of me that way, why not let me end here too?_

But he’s not like that.  He surrounds himself with life, and so much of it – his existence is a testament to life itself, to the dead silence of living things.  He’s still there, even when she’s dying, he’s trying, maybe just because of something he alone knows, but he’s still trying.  Why not let go?

...don’t you fucking die on me...

_But I am dying.  I am dying right next to you.  I’m dead in the scene.  So that’s it.  That’s me._


	42. Mars Implies

The implication and the accusation both hang in the air as they watch each other, as if measuring up one another.  Brigitte doesn’t say anything before returning to her seat in front of the TV and staring at the moving pictures.

She hurts.

Sam doesn’t leave.  He lingers for a moment or two, and then sits next to her.  She doesn’t flinch.  Her thoughts run along with what were pretty much Trina’s second-to-last words: _somebody shouldn’t give him the satisfaction._

A part of her resents that.  Another part digs it.

That’s when Sam shifts and wraps his good arm around her and pulls her in.  She goes all stiff, her muscles locking and her palms, pressed against his chest, are getting ready to push him away.  Who the fuck does this guy think he is?

He doesn’t say anything.  Without letting go, he plays with her hair, hands raking in, brushing against her scalp and withdrawing strands.

“It wasn’t your fault.”

Does he mean to imply that it wasn’t her words that pushed Ginger over the edge?

“I’m sorry.” He says.

The fuck is _he_ apologizing for!?

Brigitte tilts her head upwards and sees it in his face.  Something she never expected to see.  Guilt.


	43. The Talk, I

Brigitte doesn’t know what to do.  There she is, all pressed up against him, which she guesses she would enjoy a bit more had she not been on the rag, tongue-tied and seeing something different.  Guilt.  It perplexes her, it paralyzes her – guilt? For what?

It’s time to go a shade orange and finally speak.

“Sam?”

“Yeah?”

“You don’t... blame yourself or anything, right? You know it wasn’t your fault?”

Sam considers it.  He’s still replaying that scene, his version of the tipping point that he can’t help _but_ remember.  His tipping point differs from hers, he’s sure, because hers is a moment succeeding a decision, but his is a moment of indecision.

“You know that, right?” Brigitte asks, again.

He doesn’t look at her.  He knows that she’ll be looking at him with those green eyes wide open, and he doesn’t want to see that right now.  Coping for two has taken too much out of him, he sees.

“Hey.” Brigitte pushes him slightly, no, why is she... she creates distance and looks at him, catches his stare and there they are, those green eyes. “Look at me.” She says, he already is, he _was_ looking, “Tell me that you know it wasn’t your fault?”

Isn’t it? When it comes right down to it, he’s just not sure.


	44. The Talk, II

Sam doesn’t say anything.  He can’t.

In his head, he’s hearing Ginger say, _I’m a killer fuck._   He didn’t hear himself disagreeing, at all. He said, _I’m sure you’re partly right_ , and right then and there, some part of him wondered, what would she be like? What would she do? What would she feel like, inside? And she repeated those words to him, as if she knew.

That was when Sam really understood what he was to Ginger then.  A revenge fuck.  But the wrongness of it all still drew him in.  And so he lay, teetering on the edge, digging the edge, loving the precipice and the rush of it all, drinking it up.  He thought about Brigitte.  What about her feelings?

Ginger’s words repeated: _Loyalty is for squares, Sam._

And Brigitte, he knows now, was right outside, in the dark, trying to find her way.

“Sam?” green eyes, watching him.  Don’t look, just don’t look.

“Yeah...” he says, “Yeah, I’m...”

He says no, but without force, without actual intent.  He should, he really should, this isn’t the way, this isn’t... this is fucked and...

“Sam! This is difficult enough without you zoning out on me, so just, like, return to Earth and talk to me!”

Sam raises an eyebrow and gives half a smile.

“I sometimes forget how honest you can be.” He says, “Sometimes I forget...” _and other times I can’t, because, how can I forget? You were honest and everything changed then._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The exchange "I'm a killer fuck"/"I'm sure you're partly right" is in the revised script. The "loyalty's for squares, Sam" is in a deleted scene where, upon being asked by Ginger if he's afraid he'll hurt her feelings, Sam replies "What about your sister's feelings?"


	45. The Talk, III

Brigitte knows that there is only one way through this.  Full disclosure, full stop.  Mincing words and using euphemisms is just going to confuse things, and, from the looks of it, things are confused enough already and she doesn’t need the extra baggage.  Coping for two isn’t something she’s capable of at that point, and she believes Sam did that enough.

And maybe, just maybe, having this talk is exactly what she needs.

“I take responsibility because I was the one who told her exactly what she didn’t want to hear.  It was what she needed to hear – I know Ginger.  I should have known that wasn’t the way.  I should have tried to go her way, I don’t know...”

Sam listens.  He wants to say something, say a lot of things, but this is one of those moments wherein speaking out of turn will fuck up everything, he knows.

“I could have done anything.  I didn’t.”

“Neither did I.” Sam says, “All I could think about was... saving you.  That sounds like bullshit, I know, and I sound like some idiot with a messiah complex, but... that’s it.  All I could think about was how to save you... and only you.”

Brigitte looks at him.

What?

She has to ask.

“Why would you save _me_?”


	46. The Talk, IV

Sam can’t believe he’s actually trying to come up with an answer to this question.  Why would he save her? Is she serious with this?

“Why would you save _me_? You already knew I wasn’t the one infected, you already knew that everything was for Ginger, why would you save _me!?_ Actually, wait a second, why _didn’t_ you save her!?”

“She slit her throat, Brigitte.” Sam says, “She had already bled out by the time you or I got to do anything.”

“Why didn’t you let me do it?” she asks, not because of malice, but because she can’t understand this seemingly endless kindness that is the heart of him, and maybe it’s hormones, maybe it’s the talk, but she’s sick of trying to understand it.

“Brigitte...” Sam begins, but what? Brigitte, what? “I couldn’t let you do it.  That’s just it, there is no complicated reason why, alright?  You would be dead.  I don’t want you to be dead. And what would you even die for?”

“I would have done right by her.” Brigitte says, “I would have fulfilled the Pact.”

“The Pact..?”

“ _Out by sixteen or dead in this scene, but together forever._ ”

“She was already dead, Brigitte.”

“Wasn’t I?”

“No.  You weren’t.  I saw you.”


	47. She Likes to Hide

She likes to hide.

She hides her face behind her hair, because she never was all that beautiful anyway.  It was Ginger that they noticed, always, with her round face, full cheeks and red hair.  She hides behind her clothes, because to put as many layers between herself and the world makes sense to her.  She doesn’t have any of the features her body should have.  No hips to speak of, no breasts, nothing.

She hides her thoughts behind her silence and she hides her emotions behind her inaction.

But, hiding her out-of-control emotions behind silence isn’t working this time, because he holds her chin and raises her head slightly and looks her dead in the eye.  And she knows that finally, he found her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The title of the chapter is a Pain of Salvation song.


	48. He Likes to Hide

He likes to hide.

He hides behind the persona of the Bailey Downs dope runner.  He hides the dope in his bedroom.  He hides in the greenhouse and hides many things in the Old Goose bottles - thoughts and memories he needs to keep hidden away.

He hides his losses behind attitude, his loneliness behind the visage of a solitary man.  He hides little clues in everything so that someday, somebody might come and find him where he hides, because even then, he will pull off that stunt and hide behind yet another layer.  Because all those layers are empty and underneath them all, he’s just the greenthumb and the dope runner and that’s it.  That’s him.

Now, he lifts her chin up and stares at her dead in the eye, and sees what he knew even in that night.  She stops hiding and he, able to find her, believes in that moment that maybe, he can stop hiding too, one day, if she’s willing to seek him out.


	49. Crossing the River Styx

The moment lingers and they are in this strange staring contest, almost – neither yield, both strive for dominance and both expect the first move from the other.

Brigitte bites her lower lip for a stray second.  She feels the ache cripple her again, but she shuts the cramps out, puts them in a box and places them in the back rows of her awareness.  They leak out, yes, just like her, but it’s being handled.

She just doesn’t know how to do this.

He is Life.  He is things pertaining to Life, things about Life.  He walks in the world she’s too afraid to touch.  He’s different than the others.  But who is she? Nobody.  Insignificant.  Nobody knows her, and she knows nobody – she’s swimming up river Styx without a paddle.  Reaching out will be, as she sees it, the boldest move yet.  To reach out and... touch.

Brigitte takes Sam’s cheeks into her palms and he feels awfully cold.  His skin is soft, softer than she thought it’d be.  She pulls him and locks her lips onto his with a kiss.


	50. Kisses and Chemicals

It’s strange.  It’s not like anything she’s ever experienced before. It’s a tug-of-war, only with lips. He doesn’t press for dominance like she saw in the movies, he’s quite gentle and exploratory.  She kisses him back, to the best of her ability – she tries to emulate what she has seen in many of those and tries to catch his upper lip.  He accommodates her by capturing her lower lip and locking her into place.

Something inside her is both aching and itching at the same time. The chemicals in her body are slouching towards chaos and she’s going all haywire, and she likes it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The tile is a line from the song "Kiss" by The Romanovs.


	51. Rooming Arrangements

Brigitte is the one to break it.  His face remains in her palms, but his good hand has graduated to her waist.  Brigitte doesn’t push it away, it’s good there.  It’s kinda nice, because the touch, his touch, confirms his existence for her.  He’s alive, he’s there.  He listens, hears, understands...

His words repeat in her head.  _I saw you._

She wants him to see her.  She wants him to see her, but not now.  Not like this.  She’s aching and bleeding, and, she feels, a mess.  This isn’t what she can be.  She’s never been particularly pretty, or pretty, period, but there is an element she can’t quite describe in being on the rag that gets her to stop.

Sam, unsure, looks at her, expecting a sign, because you can never be too sure.

“It’s late.” Brigitte comments.

“You can just sleep in my bed, with me, if you want.” Sam says, “You’ll just end up sleeping there anyway.”

“No.” Brigitte says, one second passes, Sam’s expression shifts and she stumbles, “Not no-no, just... not tonight.  I mean, I ache and bleed and I feel too feverish to share a bed.”

“Your call.” He says, giving her that crooked smile.

“I’ll take the couch.” She says.

“Whatever suits you.”

Sam kisses the top of her head, sending warmth.  Nobody but Pam ever did that, and her kisses were cold, but Brigitte liked them nonetheless.  He walks out the room, and Brigitte calls after him.

“Sam!”

“Yes?”

He sticks his head out from the corner.

“Umm... can I stay here?”

“Aren’t you already?”

“I mean, after... everything.  After whatever.  Henry’s gone.  Pam’s in jail.  I just don’t want that house, don’t want that room but I have nowhere else to go.”

“You can stay with me.” Sam says.


	52. The Girl Who Cried Monster (Desolation) (Sigh) (Movement 6)

_“...You MONSTER!”_

_The final word hangs in the air like a bad omen, seeping into every inch of the room quickly and covering it in its shadow.  Monstrous, full of malintent and malevolent desire, a darkened crust of bad intentions and twisted imagination, the word grips all three of them._

_Ginger snaps._

_“Monster?” Ginger asks through clenched fangs, her two new ones, sharp and deadly, “Monster!?” slight lisp on the s, her tongue scraping against her jaw, “MONSTER!?”_

_Sam rolls and prepares to push the ground, but Ginger, sensing the movement, delivers a sturdy kick to his head and sends him rolling right back._

_Ginger stands up, takes a step towards Brigitte, who, now afraid and more afraid by the second, shirks from her.  Ginger’s hand jerks forward, impossibly fast, and Brigitte yelps and closes her eyes._

_Ginger retrieves a knife from the desk and takes a few steps back._

_“Monster? Well, at least, I’m out there, B, I’m living in the world! What are you doing? Huh? All you ever do is just hide in your precious little mind, and you’re scared shitless to step outside and find out what anything is like! Is this your big cry of independence, huh? The little girl who cried monster!? Well, guess what!? I’ve seen the world you’re still hiding from, and it’s full of fucking monsters!”_

_Brigitte can’t speak.  Words are knotting up in her throat, and she’s losing the situation, losing her grip on the whole thing, it’s slipping and..._

_“You wanna see a monster!? Here, I’ll_ show _you a monster!”_

_A flash and Ginger sticks the knife right into her throat and buries it to the hilt.  She shakes, but her grip on the knife is still solid._

_“Ginger what are you doing!?” Brigitte screams._

_Ginger smiles that vicious smile and moves the knife. She slashes her own throat open, leaving Brigitte, once more and for the final time, to pick up the pieces._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The title (including the "Desolation" bit) is a song by To the Depths. The sub-title is a song by The Angelic Process.
> 
> Also, the sisters have a violent exchange in one of the scripts, and Ginger delivers the line "all you do is suck and hide in your own little mind" which I thought is something she might have said.


	53. Morningrise

Brigitte opens her eyes with a sigh.  The purple candle on the birch coffee table stares at her.  The ache inside her is continuing, but it’s not as bad as the first day.  Something took the edge off, she thinks, but, then again, she kinda liked her edge.

Through the windows and the glass ceiling of the greenhouse, Brigitte can see that it’s barely morning.  The sun is just rising.  She sits up, and becomes aware of the tears running down her cheeks, tears after Ginger.  The thought immediately stumbles upon another.  She remembers Ginger; Ginger as her sister.  Before the lycanthrope, before the curse and everything that, in the end, killed her.

No.  Everything that, in the end, killed both of them.

Brigitte feels her own death more profoundly than her sister’s, and it surprises her.  She feels reborn in that morningrise outside, slowly being remade into something different.

Ginger is barely two weeks dead, she reminds herself.

But the fact of the matter is, she knows that Sam is right.  Ginger was dead the moment she was bitten.  But her absence isn’t less painful by that fact.  Brigitte hurts.  There’s a knot in her chest, right where Ginger used to be, and Brigitte knows that it’s there to stay.

“I miss you, Ginge...” she says, to nobody in particular.

Brigitte cries and in every tear, she finds a piece of Ginger, still alive.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, that is an Opeth reference in the title.


	54. Rumors

Wallace Rowlands pulls up in front of the greenhouse and turns the engine off.  He remembers the rumor that the greenhouse was built right where Fort Bailey used to be.  He doesn’t give credence to rumors, not unless there’s extenuating circumstances surrounding it, maybe a witness testimony or three.

But still, something keeps drawing him back there, he feels.  Again, that feeling he gets when he has those nightmares.  It’s been the same ever since Caroline took Geoffrey and left him, and left him in that house.  It’s the house, it must be.

Then again, he is there because of circumstances, and with a peace offering.  So he gets off and walks up to the greenhouse, with every step enhancing the feeling of having been there when the greenhouse wasn’t.

Wallace is about to ponder on that further when the door opens and Brigitte Fitzgerald, wearing an oversized shirt, likewise large pants and a comically large coat.  She stops dead at her tracks when she sees him, so he puts on his best smile.


	55. Stonewall

“Hello, Brigitte.” Rowlands smiles, “How are you?”

“That’s not a question I can answer without my lawyer present.”

Rowlands chuckled and shrugged, “You know, some might take that as an admission of guilt.”

“And some might take it as invoking the law, you know, that thing you swore to uphold?”

“So, they tell me that you’re staying here at the greenhouse?”

“I have nowhere else to go.”

“You have your house.”

“My house is a crime scene.  My room is a crime scene. It’s been two weeks and they won’t even let me in to collect my clothes!”

“I can arrange that, you know,” Rowlands says, “It’s very doable.”

“What do you want in return?”

“You not stonewalling me.”

“Me without a lawyer, you mean?”

“No.  You not stonewalling me, even with a lawyer.”

Brigitte considers it.  The reason isn’t really that the police wouldn’t let her.  They actually did let her through after some coaxing and some drama, but she didn’t find it in herself to go down there.  Not to the room she’d shared with Ginger.  Not to the room she knew she’d die in, not to the room they buried themselves in.

“What do you want to know?” Brigitte asks.

“Nothing in particular right now, but there are few unsolved cases still pending – your guidance counselor’s death, the death of that janitor, which I’m still shaking my head at...”

“I don’t know about that.”

“Well, what his name, a Jason McCardy came in yesterday and told the officers that you knew something.”

Brigitte strains to hide her relief.

“You think I do?”

“I’m not willing to take that to heart on just his word.  Anyway, so, will you be here if I need to know anything?”

“I’ll be here.”

“See that you are.  G’day.”

Rowlands turns to leave, but then stops.

“Oh, by the way.  The coroner’s office is releasing your sister’s body.  I can make funeral arrangements for you, if you want...”

Brigitte considers it.

“If I can be involved in it, yeah.  Sure.”

“Okay then.  I’ll be in touch.”

Rowlands and Brigitte stays outside.  She finds a suitable tree stump and sits down on it and watches the early morning shuffle of Bailey Downs.


	56. Epilogue (Seek and Destroy)

“Early morning?”

Brigitte turns to see Sam, with a black jacket draped over his shoulders, arm in sling and cigarette in mouth.

“Late night.” She says.

“Ah.”

Sam comes up to her side and, trying not to fall, sits down.  She stares at Bailey Downs.  Whichever house she picks, the suburb seems to sprawl out from there, repeating itself ad nauseam until turning into a labyrinth of dead ends.

“Penny for your thoughts.” Sam says.

“It’s nothing.” Brigitte says, surprised he’d ask, “I was thinking about _cul-de-sacs_.”

“Dead ends? In what way?”

Brigitte just glares at him, and upon his noticing that, turns away to stare at the copy-paste grid of the suburb.  He says nothing further.  Continues to smoke next to her.  She feels a small piece of excitement, a burning desire and a cautious objection to it.  These two ends war it out while Sam simply sits there and smokes.

Fuck it.

“Do you want to play a game?”

It’s Sam’s turn to glare.  A game?

“Maybe.  Does it need my right arm?”

“No...” an almost-chuckle, “It doesn’t.”

“What’s it called?”

“Search and Destroy.”

“Sounds violent.  How is it played?”

“Normally, Ginge and I...” Stop.  Backtrack.  Correct. “Normally, you use people but we have houses instead.  So we’ll do houses.  You pick a house, and you try to come up with an interesting way in which the family living there can die.”

A brief moment of silence, and something inside her screams that this was the worst idea she’s ever had, that this is exactly the type of thing that...

“Any rules?”

...that just might work.

“No.”

“Okay.  Let’s see... there.  Right there.”

He points to a house.  One among the many.

“That one.  Gas leak, but that’s not what kills them.”

“It’s not?”

“No, the mother miraculously wakes up and stumbles into the kitchen.  She feels groggy, doesn’t know why, thinks its too little sleep with no meds.  Reaches to the counter, takes a cigarette, strikes up a match.  Boom.”

“Don’t they have a dog?”

“Either caught in the blast or killed with a piece of shrapnel.”

Brigitte can laugh, if she can just recall how it went.  She opts for a smile instead, the only expression close to it that she knows is right.  She steals a glance through her hair to see that Sam, too, is smiling slightly.

“So.” Sam said, “Your turn.  One-up me... if you can.”

Brigitte grinned.

“Oh, you’ll be sorry.”


End file.
